Age dating basalt, dating wedgwood

Excessively Old " Ages" For Grand Canyon Lava Flows

Links to external sites will be displayed in another window. If layers are deposited horizontally over the sea floor, then they would be expected to be laterally continuous over some distance. Once these age relations were worked out, another principle fell into place - the principle of fossil succession.

Wedgwood Marks

How reliable is geologic dating

In the example here, as the basalt flowed out on the surface it picked up inclusions of the underlying sandstone. The basaltic and andesitic dikes and sills that occur within the strata underlying the Cardenas Basalt are similar in mineralogy and chemistry to the Cardenas volcanic rocks. Certain fossils also accumulate in a distinctive pattern or position that serves to define the top side. The Steppingstone Problem. This represents the parent isotope.

He concluded that process that are currently operating on the Earth must be the same processes that operated in the past. These assumptions furnish the most serious limitations on the accumulation clock. Alkali basalts typically have mineral assemblages that lack orthopyroxene but contain olivine. There is even some valid question as to if granite could be formed from magma at all since this has never, to my knowledge, been observed or duplicated in the lab. What if all the minerals were evenly distributed throughout, atom for atom?

Wedgwood Marks & Dating Wedgwood Pottery and Porcelain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Great uplift, accompanied by rapid erosion, is taking place and large sediment fans are being deposited in the Indian Ocean to the south. Because, any testing of any portion of the object would give the same results. In radioactivity was discovered, and it was soon learned that radioactive decay occurs at a constant rate throughout time. Nonconformities occur where rocks that formed deep in the Earth, such as intrusive igneous rocks or metamorphic rocks, are overlain by sedimentary rocks formed at the Earth's surface.

Basalts are important rocks within metamorphic belts, as they can provide vital information on the conditions of metamorphism within the belt. Place the following features in order of formation and state the law used to relative age date each. As a result of millions of years of erosion these rocks now lie exposed along the coast where they are locally buried by a thin layer of modern sediment. But, is this the age of the Earth?

Within this group are around individual lava flows each of rather uniform thickness over many kilometers with several extending up to kilometers from their origin. Andesite Microdiorite Diorite. So a rock can get a very old radiometric age just by having average amounts of potassium and argon.

Select the photographs to display the original source in another window. Olson Thomas Edvard Krogh. Dalrymple may have a point. Some of the lava flows are fan-jointed, ropy, and have porphyritic to aphanitic and vesicular textures.

We have now presented most of the tools necessary to interpret Earth history. Similar cultures must have existed in both areas and lived at the same time. For example, it is recommended that one choose samples with as few vesicles and microlites as possible. Interestingly enough, dating whole rock isochrons can be used as a test to see if the sample shows evidence of mixing.

For these reasons, these formations were selected for radioactive isosope dating by the rubidium-strontium isochron technique. The argument that various radiometric dating methods agree with each other isn't necessarily true. The fundamental dating assumption no radiogenic argon was present when the rock formed is brought into question. Redirected from Columnar basalt.

  1. The largest occurrences of basalt are in the ocean floor that is almost completely made up by basalt.
  2. The Eons are divided into Eras only Phanerozoic Eras are shown in the chart.
  3. With this new information, in combination with the other principles of stratigraphy, geologists we able to recognize how life had changed or evolved throughout Earth history.
  4. The isochron method of dating is perhaps the most logically sound of all the dating methods - at first approximation.
  5. Note that the geologic column was established and fairly well known before geologists had a means of determining numeric ages.
  6. The human element is also important here.
The global tectonic rock cycle

Geologists themselves recognize the problem of mistaking non-trackway imperfections as fission tracks. It is interesting that hundreds of species are found all mixed up together ranging from temperate birch and spruce to subtropical Eucalyptus and bald cypress. When magma comes in contact with soil or cold rock, it may cause the soil or rock to heat up resulting in a baked zone in the surrounding rock near the contacts with the igneous rock. When we find evidence of a hiatus in the stratigraphic record we call it an unconformity. Online Etymology Dictionary.

Rubidium-Strontium Data Rubidium, a trace element which is chemically similar to potassium, is naturally radioactive. Heating of rocks can also release argon. The presence of planktonic forms, aquatic macrophytes, and marsh plants indicates that deposition of the sediments took place in a body of water, probably a pond or lake. Unless the rock is heated to a very high temperature, both the U and its daughter Pb remain in the rock.

Why can't you say exactly what the age of the rock is? Has the Cardenas Basalt been successfully dated? Rocks that flow in a plastic state record their deformation in the alignment of their constituent minerals. Now, some rocks in the crust are believed not to hold their argon, so this argon will enter the spaces between the rocks. Although the types of trash in each pit is quite variable, each layer has a distinctive kind of trash that distinguishes it from other layers in the pits.

Would you like to take a short survey

Age dating basalt

They are based on visual observations and simple logical deductions and rely on a correlation and integration of data that occurs in fragmentary form at many outcrop locations. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. This would make the observed haloes consistent with an old age for the coal. There are also methods used to detect the presence of mixing with crystalline isochron analysis.

  • For example, the presence of recycled bricks at an archaeological site indicates the sequence in which the structures were built.
  • Limited Contamination contamination can form straight lines that are misleading.
  • Each assumption is a potential variable, the magnitude of which can seldom be ascertained.
  • On Earth, most basalt magmas have formed by decompression melting of the mantle.

Dating Wedgwood

Methinks it is Like a Weasel. The dike not only truncates the xenoliths in the syenite but exhibits a thin black ultafine-grained chill zone where it is in contact with the granite. Or, dating asian women in was there some argon trapped in the rocks originally? Place in order of formation the following features. These tools include knowledge of different kinds of rocks and the conditions under which they form and the laws of stratigraphy.

Due to weathering or high concentrations of plagioclase, some basalts can be quite light-coloured, superficially resembling andesite to untrained eyes. In addition, not all of the radon would be on the surface of the particles of uranium. Old Wedgwood has a character of its own.

The Cardenas Basalt has also been called the Rama Formation. Thus we can say how old something is. Thank you for your feedback. Geologist often make a graphic to display stratigraphic information in an understandable way. So, how confident can one be in zircon dates who's published Pb levels range from very high to very low?

Cardenas Basalt

Sedimentary and metamorphic rocks and age determination

Ideally, however, any one basaltic rock from a given site should yield the same isotopic age, regardless of the method used. By examining relationships like these all over the world, numeric age has been very precisely correlated with the Geologic Column. These phenocrysts usually are of olivine or a calcium-rich plagioclase, which have the highest melting temperatures of the typical minerals that can crystallize from the melt. Thus, does elder scrolls any such whole-rock variations in P at some later time would mean that the original rock was never homogenous when it formed.

Cardenas Basalt
  • Gwyneth paltrow dating list
  • 10 worst dating cities
  • Personal dating agencies london
  • Linx dating service
  • Create a dating website
  • Young dro dating fantasia


Role of internal variability in Pacific sea-level trends

Co-Author: Pedro DiNezio
Co-Author: Christina Karamperidou
Co-Author: Clara Deser
We plan to explore the role of natural variability on sea-level trends in the Pacific, with focus on the tropical western Pacific and the North Pacific. We will apply the dynamical adjustment technique of Deser et al. and the CESM1 large ensemble to develop a methodology to isolate forced and internal trends from observed sea-level records. We will focus on the following observational datasets and periods: 1) Satellite altimetry (1992--2014), Church and White (2011) global sea-level reconstruction (1950--2009), and tide-gage data from Honolulu and the west coast of the US (1920--2014).


Butter Pepper Chicken

Ingredients Checklist

Method of Preparation

  1. To begin with, marinate the chicken in curd, salt, ginger-garlic paste, 1tbsp pepper powder for 1/2 hr.
  2. Then in a pan, add Dalda® Oil and put the remaining pepper powder and add the marinated chicken, mix well and cove the pan with a lid and cook on a low flame until light brown in colour.
  3. Serve hot with Green Chutney.


Search Results: 1 - 10 of 100 matches for " "
All listed articles are free for downloading (OA Articles)
Page 1 /100
Display every page Item
Random Lasing in an Inhomogeneous and Disordered System of Cold Atoms  [PDF]
L. V. Gerasimov,D. V. Kupriyanov,M. D. Havey
Physics , 2015, DOI: 10.1134/S0030400X1509009X
Abstract: We consider light trapping in an amplifying medium consisting of cold alkali-metal atoms; the atomic gas plays a dual role as a scattering and as a gain medium. We perform Monte-Carlo simulations for the combined processes. In some configurations of the inhomogeneous distribution this leads to a point of instability behavior and a signature of random lasing in a cold atomic gas.
Optical parametric oscillation with distributed feedback in cold atoms  [PDF]
Alexander Schilke,Claus Zimmermann,Philippe W. Courteille,William Guerin
Physics , 2011, DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2011.320
Abstract: There is currently a strong interest in mirrorless lasing systems, in which the electromagnetic feedback is provided either by disorder (multiple scattering in the gain medium) or by order (multiple Bragg reflection). These mechanisms correspond, respectively, to random lasers and photonic crystal lasers. The crossover regime between order and disorder, or correlated disorder, has also been investigated with some success. Here, we report one-dimensional photonic-crystal lasing (that is, distributed feedback lasing) with a cold atom cloud that simultaneously provides both gain and feedback. The atoms are trapped in a one-dimensional lattice, producing a density modulation that creates a strong Bragg reflection with a small angle of incidence. Pumping the atoms with auxiliary beams induces four-wave mixing, which provides parametric gain. The combination of both ingredients generates a mirrorless parametric oscillation with a conical output emission, the apex angle of which is tunable with the lattice periodicity.
A Cold-Strontium Laser in the Superradiant Crossover Regime  [PDF]
Matthew A. Norcia,James K. Thompson
Physics , 2015,
Abstract: Recent proposals suggest that lasers based on narrow dipole-forbidden transitions in cold alkaline earth atoms could achieve linewidths that are orders of magnitude smaller than linewidths of any existing lasers. Here, we demonstrate a laser based on the 7.5 kHz linewidth dipole forbidden $^3 $P$_1$ to $^1 $S$_0$ transition in laser-cooled and tightly confined $^{88}$Sr. We can operate this laser in the bad-cavity regime, where coherence is primarily stored in the atoms, or continuously tune to the more conventional good-cavity regime, where coherence is primarily stored in the light field. We show that the cold-atom gain medium can be repumped to achieve quasi steady-state lasing, and demonstrate up to an order of magnitude suppression in the sensitivity of laser frequency to changes in cavity length, the primary limitation for the most frequency stable lasers today.
Electron shelving induced lasing in cold bosonic atoms in optical lattice  [PDF]
Aranyabhuti Bhattacherjee
Physics , 2004,
Abstract: We calculate the absorption spectrum of cold three level Helium atoms in lambda configuration in an optical lattice.Our results show the possibilty of lasing at certain points on the optical lattice which are capable of rendering one of the transitions metastable as compared to the other. A coherent control over the stimulated emission is possible using an axial magnetic field.
Euclidean matrix theory of random lasing in a cloud of cold atoms  [PDF]
A. Goetschy,S. E. Skipetrov
Physics , 2011, DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/96/34005
Abstract: We develop an ab initio analytic theory of random lasing in an ensemble of atoms that both scatter and amplify light. The theory applies all the way from low to high density of atoms. The properties of the random laser are controlled by an Euclidean matrix with elements equal to the Green's function of the Helmholtz equation between pairs of atoms in the system. Lasing threshold and the intensity of laser emission are calculated in the semiclassical approximation. The results are compared to the outcome of the diffusion theory of random lasing.
Threshold of a random laser based on Raman gain in cold atoms  [PDF]
William Guerin,Nicolas Mercadier,Davide Brivio,Robin Kaiser
Physics , 2009, DOI: 10.1364/OE.17.011236
Abstract: We address the problem of achieving a random laser with a cloud of cold atoms, in which gain and scattering are provided by the same atoms. In this system, the elastic scattering cross-section is related to the complex atomic polarizability. As a consequence, the random laser threshold is expressed as a function of this polarizability, which can be fully determined by spectroscopic measurements. We apply this idea to experimentally evaluate the threshold of a random laser based on Raman gain between non-degenerate Zeeman states and find a critical optical thickness on the order of 200, which is within reach of state-of-the-art cold-atom experiments.
Threshold of a Random Laser with Cold Atoms  [PDF]
Luis S. Froufe-Pérez,William Guerin,Rémi Carminati,Robin Kaiser
Physics , 2008, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.173903
Abstract: We address the problem of achieving an optical random laser with a cloud of cold atoms, in which gain and scattering are provided by the same atoms. The lasing threshold can be defined using the on-resonance optical thickness b0 as a single critical parameter. We predict the threshold quantitatively, as well as power and frequency of the emitted light, using two different light transport models and the atomic polarizability of a strongly-pumped two-level atom. We find a critical b0 on the order of 300, which is within reach of state-of-the-art cold-atom experiments. Interestingly, we find that random lasing can already occur in a regime of relatively low scattering.
Towards a random laser with cold atoms  [PDF]
William Guerin,Nicolas Mercadier,Franck Michaud,Davide Brivio,Luis S. Froufe-Pérez,Rémi Carminati,Vitalie Eremeev,Arthur Goetschy,Sergey E. Skipetrov,Robin Kaiser
Physics , 2009, DOI: 10.1088/2040-8978/12/2/024002
Abstract: Atoms can scatter light and they can also amplify it by stimulated emission. From this simple starting point, we examine the possibility of realizing a random laser in a cloud of laser-cooled atoms. The answer is not obvious as both processes (elastic scattering and stimulated emission) seem to exclude one another: pumping atoms to make them behave as amplifier reduces drastically their scattering cross-section. However, we show that even the simplest atom model allows the efficient combination of gain and scattering. Moreover, supplementary degrees of freedom that atoms offer allow the use of several gain mechanisms, depending on the pumping scheme. We thus first study these different gain mechanisms and show experimentally that they can induce (standard) lasing. We then present how the constraint of combining scattering and gain can be quantified, which leads to an evaluation of the random laser threshold. The results are promising and we draw some prospects for a practical realization of a random laser with cold atoms.
Lasing and cooling in a hot cavity  [PDF]
Thomas Salzburger Helmut Ritsch
Physics , 2006, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.74.033806
Abstract: We present a microscopic laser model for many atoms coupled to a single cavity mode, including the light forces resulting from atom-field momentum exchange. Within a semiclassical description, we solve the equations for atomic motion and internal dynamics to obtain analytic expressions for the optical potential and friction force seen by each atom. When optical gain is maximum at frequencies where the light field extracts kinetic energy from the atomic motion, the dynamics combines optical lasing and motional cooling. From the corresponding momentum diffusion coefficient we predict sub-Doppler temperatures in the stationary state. This generalizes the theory of cavity enhanced laser cooling to active cavity systems. We identify the gain induced reduction of the effective resonator linewidth as key origin for the faster cooling and lower temperatures, which implys that a bad cavity with a gain medium can replace a high-Q cavity. In addition, this shows the importance of light forces for gas lasers in the low-temperature limit, where atoms can arrange in a periodic pattern maximizing gain and counteracting spatial hole burning. Ultimately, in the low temperature limit, such a setup should allow to combine optical lasing and atom lasing in single device.
Observation of lasing without inversion in a hot rubidium vapor under electromagnetically-induced transparency conditions  [PDF]
Haibin Wu,Min Xiao,J. Gea-Banacloche
Physics , 2008, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.78.041802
Abstract: We have observed CW lasing without inversion in a gas of hot rubidium atoms in an optical cavity under conditions of electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT). The medium is pumped coherently and resonantly by a single ``coupling'' beam which also produces EIT in the lasing transition. The steady-state intensity exhibits thresholds as a function of the atomic density and the strength of the coupling beam. A theoretical model for an effective three-level lambda system indicates that gain without inversion is possible in this system if the two ground states are coupled by depolarizing collisions, and if the decay branching ratios meet certain conditions.
Page 1 /100
Display every page Item


Thursday, 27 March 2014

Question Corner with Lorraine Mace - Answers to questions on that, which and where

Seb from Inverness sent in a question over when to use that and when to use which. I know this is something that vexes many writers, so hope the answer helps.

Seb says: I’m not a novice writer by any means, but I can never decide what the rule is over that and which. Is there a simple way to remember?

Okay, the basic rule is this: if the sentence doesn’t need the clause (it makes sense without) you use which. If the sentence does need the clause you use that.

The car, which is green, has a manual gearbox.
The car that is green has a manual gearbox.

The two sentences look identical at first, but the meanings are not the same.

The car, which is green, has a manual gearbox. This tells us there is only one car and it has a manual gearbox. The clause (the words inside the two commas) isn’t necessary to illustrate the meaning. It is additional information and doesn’t affect the fact there is only one car and it has a manual gearbox.

The car that is green has a manual gearbox. This sentence suggests there is more than one car, but it is the car that is green that has the manual gearbox. The phrase ‘that is green’ is necessary to show clearly of all the cars on the forecourt, it is the green one that has the manual gearbox.

The proper phrase for it is a restrictive clause because another part of the sentence depends on it. You can’t remove that clause (that is green) without changing the meaning of the sentence.

Nancy, who is currently living in Barcelona, is doing a non-fiction writing course. As she says: living abroad, it’s not always easy to carry out research. Do you know of any good reference sites?

As I wasn’t sure what topic or categories would be of benefit, I’ve collected a range of online reference sites, all of which are useful for those of us who have limited access to English language libraries and museums, but are equally useful to readers who aren’t resident abroad.

Ask Oxford has built a database on grammar, usage and words, as well as giving a quote of the week, word of the day, spelling help and origins of words and phrases.
Cambridge dictionary is useful:
Merriam Webster is another good online dictionary and is useful when an alternative word is needed.

Quotes and Sayings is a wonderful site to find quotes by subject or author, excerpts from speeches and poetry, and a good selection of proverbs and sayings. The site also provides the full text of several books by Arthur Conan Doyle and the following works by Shakespeare: All's Well that Ends Well, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and his Sonnets.

Museums is a gateway to various UK museums, galleries and heritage attractions. provides access to a database of about 5,000 artefacts from the British Museum's collections. produced by the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council, this is an online database of more than 6,000 collections in the UK's museums, galleries, archives and libraries. The Imperial War Museum covers conflicts from the First World War to the present day. is an American site that provides information on museums and galleries worldwide. the National Gallery Search allows you to explore by artist, subject, theme or title. the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television gives details of the collections which include the world's first negative and the earliest television footage. the National Portrait Gallery lists collections by name of artist or sitter, by medium, or by subject. the Natural History Museum has details of the museum's collections, information about research, details of services and access to the catalogue. the Tate Online gives access to works in the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives.

Fee-paying sites
The British Library gives online access to this incredible resource and offers copies of documents for a fee. is the online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, will be published in the USA on 2nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller series featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending.

1 comment:


Your cart is empty.

San-X Iiwaken Dog Puppies Letter Sets - B

San-X Iiwaken Dog Puppies Letter Sets - B

$ 1.93

4 letter sets of Iiwaken dog / puppies from San-X 2015

4 different designs

2 writing papers + 1 matching envelope for each set/design.
So, in total there are 8 writing papers + 4 matching envelopes

The size of letter writing paper is about 5.75 x 7.25 inch.

You will receive all the letter sets shown on the pictures

So cute, kawaii and fun

Awesome for collecting and gift

Perfect for making someone feel special with a love note.
.... for birthday gift, party favor
.... for collecting
and many many other things....


Official Rules(view all)

8.01 Umpire Qualifications and Authority

8.01 Umpire Qualifications and Authority

(a)  The League President shall appoint one or more umpires to officiate at each league championship game. The umpires shall be responsible for the conduct of the game in accordance with these official rules and for maintaining discipline and order on the playing field during the game.

(b)  Each umpire is the representative of the league and of professional baseball, and is authorized and required to enforce all of these rules. Each umpire has authority to order a player, coach, manager or club officer or employee to do or refrain from doing anything which affects the administering of these rules, and to enforce the prescribed penalties.

(c)  Each umpire has authority to rule on any point not specifically covered in these rules.

(d)  Each umpire has authority to disqualify any player, coach, manager or substitute for objecting to decisions or for unsportsmanlike conduct or language, and to eject such disqualified person from the playing field. If an umpire disqualifies a player while a play is in progress, the disqualification shall not take effect until no further action is possible in that play.

(e)  Each umpire has authority at his discretion to eject from the playing field (1) any person whose duties permit his presence on the field, such as ground crew members, ushers, photographers, newsmen, broadcasting crew members, etc., and (2) any spectator or other person not authorized to be on the playing field.


Disaster Re-silence? Disaster Resilience?

Today we had two lectures/discussions on 3/11 Fukushima disaster relief.

Sorry, that was a terribly uninteresting first sentence that in all honesty, I almost started with. I’m relieved (get it?) I caught that and it wasn’t a writing disaster.

Okay, joking and puns aside, I think our discussions today, led by Hijikata-sensei and Shinoda-sensei from Waseda University and later by Nakayama-san of Kuma Project Association, were a really interesting follow up to our meeting with Oguma Eiji yesterday. That is, Oguma Eiji provided a sort of historical sociological/activist/documentary filmmaker perspective or response to the path-dependency of Touhoku, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, and the “natural” vs “manmade” aspects of the disaster. Today, then, we approached this same event from the different lenses of information science and NPOs.

Information science takes the Environment as observed through the Five Senses to compile Data (i.e. record of the past), and uses that information and knowledge to generate Models (via induction and deduction), which then inform decision-making and action, which in turn changes that original Environment. In short, it’s a social process that goes into regional planning (though, Hijikata-sensei noted that “region” is a product of human perception). Hijikata-sensei used Kesennuma City in the Hashikami Area as a case study in discussing post-disaster regional planning and resilience. I was reminded a lot of a guest lecture in my Introduction to Environmental Studies course this past fall semester, where Professor Eileen Johnson talked about Coastal Resilience in Maine.

Keiji Nakayama actually visited Bowdoin last year and gave a similar talk on the NPO he founded, Kuma Project Association, which provides outdoor, experiential, and volunteer-based education programs. That’s not to say it was repetitive at all. Rather, it was really interesting hearing it again and being able to engage with Nakayama-san in a smaller group/discussion setting.

Nakayama-san is a close friend of Aridome-sensei and was a school refuser from the 4th to 9th grade because he disagreed with the emphasis on conformity placed in the Japanese education system. Though he didn’t go to high school, Nakayama-san decided to go to college and got a B.A in Economics because he was interested in the education quality discrepancy between “developing” and “developed” countries, which as political, cultural, and economic roots. He then pursued a Master’s in Outdoor Education and Recreational Therapy, followed by a Doctor’s in Sports Sociology. Besides his work with Kuma Project Association, Nakayama-san also, ironically enough, teachers teaching-training courses for students who want to become teachers, where he does everything he can to emphasize the importance of individuality in school settings.

Nakayama-san believes that many education systems focus too much on the knowledge component of education, which can come from family and formal (school) education. Kuma Project, therefore, aims to provide social and experiential-based education. He used a wonderful bike analogy, where “knowledge” and “experience” are the two wheels of the bike; if one is turning faster than the other, the bike can’t really move or be balanced very well. Following the 3/11 nuclear disaster, Nakayama-san realzed, driving around evacuation advisory areas, that many people weren’t getting the adequate relief they needed. Elderly people, people with disabilities, and families with children often left evacuation centers and returned home, often feeling guilt or that they were a burden or falling ill due to the stressful environment (and recovering upon returning home). Furthermore, many people in mountain areas were considered “non-affected,” even though they were without water and (especially elderly) had to walk many miles to get water and other supplies. In other words, they were considered “non-affected” from a physical damage standpoint and weren’t allowed to go to the evacuation centers. Finally, many children, but also adults needed stress-relief and social opportunities to talk about the disaster, in a setting where they could do so without feeling guilty (i.e. what if the other person suffered more than I did?).

Kuma Project Association, with the help of its college student “volunteers” (note, there is a fee, since government-based funding is tricky), seeks to meet all of these needs through its programs. It was interesting how Nakayama-san acknowledged that it’s now more accurate to call it “regional development” rather than “disaster relief support,” which might dredge up old, bad memories. As a bit of an aside, I thought Nakayama-san had this really fascinating, wonderful combination of sincerity and humor and pride and honesty in talking about his work that was a pleasure to listen to.

EDIT: I want to briefly explain this post’s title. I think “resilience” is a word tossed around a lot, especially in the face of climate change and natural disasters. I think there are worse “buzzwords,” but talking with Hijikata-sensei and Nakayama-san made me think a little bit about how events or disasters can fade from our memories, just as Nakayama-san mentioned in his talk. So I don’t want my title to evoke an idea of “silencing” disaster or climate change support efforts. Rather, it’s to point out that self-“silencing,” or memories or ideas fading into the recesses of our mind, I think can occur both with time and overuse (especially of words). I think there’s very real, valid reasons for and against letting such things fade (for instance, so as not to dredge up bad memories, as Nakayama-san said) but also reasons for and against keeping such ideas alive. It’s cliche, but as they say, we can learn from the past. Does forgetting help ease those who suffered back into everyday life or does it risk leaving that suffering unacknowledged, for lack of better words?


On that Kennedy delivered this speech, the Soviet

On September 12th, 1962, John F Kennedy – the United State’s 35th President – stood before a crowd of 35,000 people at the stadium of Rice University, Houston, Texas, and presented an inspirational speech that pushed America forward in the space race. The context of this speech was delivered during the Cold War, and at the time that Kennedy delivered this speech, the Soviet Union’s satellite – Sputnik – had already been orbiting the Earth for 4 years, and also sent the world’s first man ever – Yuri Gagarin – into space a year prior. The anxiety-filled American public was quickly losing their patience, and the President – with his determination that America will be the first to go to the moon, reassured the American public that the United States will be the pioneering country in the space race. The significance of his speech was showed when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon in 1969, and reflected just how persuasive he was for America to be able to achieve such a feat within 7 years of his speech. So today, I will be analysing the rhetorical and literary devices Kennedy applied into his speech, and how it still resonates strongly 60 years after its delivery.In the beginning of the speech, Kennedy first addresses the audience and expressed how he was “particularly delighted” to be invited as an honorary visiting professor. He specifically did not mention himself as the President, but rather a professor. And although the entire audience fully knows that he is the President, by introducing himself as a professor, he establishes a friendlier connection and makes the audience more likely to agree with his decision to go to the moon and the content that will follow. However, he still maintains his role as the President and the rhetorical device – ethos – is prominent here as he’s using his role to persuade the audience of his goal to reach the moon. He then goes on to address Rice University and describes how the audience and him “meet in an hour of change and challenge”. show entire para in screen Within the entire paragraph, Kennedy uses inclusive language with the word “we” to make the audience feel they are also a part of this situation. The American public at that time was starting to feel powerless due to the lack of progress in the space race as compared to the Soviet Union, but by including them, not just the audience who were there but also the people who were going to find out about his goal to the moon on the newspapers, would feel as if they can be part of the group who will make change and contribute to the betterment of their own country.Kennedy then condenses 50,000 years worth of man’s recorded history in a time span of half a century, “10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves.” Only five years ago, he states, man learned to write. And only a month ago, electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. So if American spacecraft successfully reach Venus and American astronauts land on the Moon, “we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.” This powerful analogy certainly helps excite the audience and demonstrates that a goal seemingly impossible to achieve is actually close within their grasps. It also motivates the audience to think what may be possible if they were actually able to reach for the stars before midnight tonight, it raises people’s hearts to make efforts to achieve this end and gives the security that their present and future efforts will not go in vain. He then goes onto explaining why America will join the space race, no matter what. Kennedy explains that the vows of America – as in the ideology of democracy – can only be fulfilled if the Nation is first to reach the moon, and therefore he wants America to be the first to do so, and to lead space exploration. He then talks about how America has vowed that they “shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest” and “not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction” but instead “by a banner of freedom and peace” and “instruments of knowledge and understanding”. Here, Kennedy creates a contrasting effect between the rivaling countries by symbolising the United State’s ideology – democracy – by using the words freedom, peace – and the Soviet Union’s ideology – communism – by using the words hostile, weapons, destruction to reinforce this unpleasant image America had on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He further emphasises his point that only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can they decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace of a new terrifying theater of war. Kennedy uses pathos and tugs onto a nerve that many Americans feared – a nuclear war – and the audience will now feel the urgency of being first to moon and be motivated to protect it from the Soviet Union. Kennedy then goes onto regarding the concerns and criticism of space exploration. He mentions that reaching the moon will be a costly and hard process. The surroundings of space is hostile to us all, and America’s technology and expertise will be greatly challenged in order to achieve this goal. But then, he asks the audience a couple of rhetorical questions. “Why do we climb the highest mountain? Why fly the Atlantic?” And adding some humor into his speech, which resonated with his Rice University audience, “why does Rice play Texas?” The audience knows that going to the moon was meant to beat the Soviet Union in the space race, but other than that, why? Well, because it is challenge. “We go the the moon in this decade,” says Kennedy “not because it is easy, but because it is hard… because the goal organizes and measures the best of American energy and skill.” Kennedy is challenging his audience and the American public to rise, to demonstrate the best of their skills, and to reinforce American leadership as an innovative, leading power. He himself replies to his rhetorical questions, and in the Cold War context, a challenge like this was very appealing to his audience. Failure to reach the Moon would not just be a failure in technological or scientific terms, it would be a failure on the part of the American people, the American spirit and idealogy. He then went on to list out the steps that America has already taken to reach the goal. By doing so, he further validates that the country is not that far off in achieving the moon land.


Lee Kwang Soo once again demonstrated his unluckiness on the “robot wars” episode of “Running Man” which aired on April 10.

Members go up against an AI in a game of “kkeut mal it gi” (literally “connecting last sounds”), a game where people take turns saying a word whose beginning sound starts with the ending sound of the previous word.

lee kwang soo 2

When it was Lee Kwang Soo’s turn to choose a word, he had to come up with a word that started with “phone.” After he isn’t able to think of one, he uses the dictionary lifeline, only to be told that there is no word in the Korean dictionary that starts with “phone.”

Flustered, Lee Kwang Soo says, “I used the lifeline but the word isn’t there (in the dictionary),” to the amusement of everyone on set.

Watch the full episode below:

Link to video: www.viki.com/videos/1096418v-running-man-episode-294

Source (1)


Helen Keller, Deaf and Blind Spokesperson and Activist - helen keller adult

Biography | American Foundation for the Blind helen keller adult

Helen Keller was an American educator, advocate for the blind and deaf and co- founder of the ACLU. Stricken by an illness at the age of 2, Keller was left blind.

After Helen had graduated college, she decided that she wanted to help others. The news spread everywhere, she became a well-known celebrity. By sharing.

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, – June 1, ) was an American author, political activist, .. This film, a semi-sequel to The Miracle Worker, recounts her college years and her early adult life. None of the early movies hint at the social.

Portrait of Helen Keller as a young girl, with a white dog on her lap (August ) As she so often remarked as an adult, her life changed on March 3,


Summer appeal 2019

Simulation training has raised the bar in surgical training, and Moorfields is leading the way in using simulation training for cataract surgery. With your help, the new simulator will help us advance our training programme further than ever.

Technology moves at a fast pace, so it is vital that we purchase a new surgical simulator machine which will allow Moorfields surgeons to perfect their skills and train the next generation of world-class eye surgeons, helping Moorfields Eye Hospital maintain the high standards of care for which we are known.

The surgical simulator will allow trainee surgeons to practice the incredible precision and coordination required to perform complex cataract surgery - ensuring patient safety and the success of future operations.

The latest, state-of-the-art surgical simulator gives trainee surgeons the chance to hone and perfect their surgical skills. This single machine will train hundreds of surgeons who will then go on to perform thousands of sight-saving operations, changing countless lives.

Diagram of the new surgical simulator
     The new surgical simulator we hope to buy, with your support, to help train and develop eye surgeons at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

So many of our patients at Moorfields will benefit from the training the new surgical simulator will provide. Because better surgeons mean more effective and safer operations.Photo of Judith Hilton

Judith Hilton had two cataract operations in 2017:

Why did you require a cataract operation?

I had begun to notice that some road signs weren’t
so clear. I couldn’t see things quite as clearly in
the distance. Colours were muted.

My appointment with the consultant confirmed
what I’d thought: I had cataracts.

How was the care you received?

They are very professional and highly organised.

No doubt about it, I felt in the safest of hands.

How has life changed since your operation?

I can see so much better!

I was amazed, following the surgery, how the world
became so much more colourful. Also, I now feel
confident to drive at night, something that I had
been avoiding for some time.

Why is it important to support Moorfields?

I am a trained theatre nurse, so I am well aware of how
essential it is to have up-to-date equipment, not only in
surgical theatres but for training too.

Anyone who's been treated at Moorfields or has friends
or family who have knows how important their work is.

It's gratifying top hear how we're able to change patients' lives - but we depend on the generosity of our supporters to ensure we can uphold our impeccable standards of training and care - George

Why your gift is so important

Father and Daughter holding hands in the parkAt Moorfields, we rely on the generosity of supporters like you to help us continue to provide research, training and surgery that is world-class.

Whatever you can give will go directly towards funding the £152,000 needed to purchase the next-generation surgical simulator. Your gift will help Moorfields to provide the best care possible for our patients.

Thank you so much for making a difference to our work.

Having good eyesight means having
independence and a better quality of life.         Donate

That is the gift you could give.


Advances in Applied Chemistry and Biochemistry

ISSN: 2652-3175

Opinion Article

Ethnic Medicine and Ethnobotany Concept to Identify and Characterize New Polysaccharide-Based Drug from Arid and Semi-Arid Lands

Noura Addoun1, Cédric Delattre2, Zakaria Boual1, Mohamed Didi Ould El Hadj1, Philippe Michaud2 and Guillaume Pierre2*

1Université Ouargla, Laboratoire Protection des Ecosystèmes en Zones Arides et Semi-arides, 30000 Ouargla, Algeria

2Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, SIGMA Clermont, Institut Pascal, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France

Received Date: 19 December, 2018

Accepted Date: 23 December, 2018

Published Date: 28 December, 2018

Addoun N, Delattre C, Boual Z, El Hadj MDO, Michaud P, et al. (2018) Ethnic Medicine and Ethnobotany Concept to Identify and Characterize New Polysaccharide-Based Drug from Arid and Semi-Arid Lands. Adv Appl Chem Biochem 2018(1): 37-39.

Correspondence should be addressed to

Guillaume Pierre, France

DOI: 10.33513/ACBC/1801-05

Keywords: Arid Lands; Ethnobotany; Plants; Polysaccharide

Polysaccharides are highly variable and complex biomolecules whose inventory of structures is still very incomplete since nature still preserves unexplored biotopes. Plants are an integral part of the daily life of human being regardless of culture, time, or knowledge development of a country. Widely distributed throughout the world, natural medicine is an ancestral knowledge handed down for centuries from generation to generation by those commonly referred to as “nganga” healers, shamans, or traditional healers. Also called alternative medicine, traditional medicine or complementary medicine remains associated for millennia to myths, legends, rituals and beliefs. This paper gives an opinion regarding ethnobotanic approach associated to the structural variability of some polysaccharides, with the purpose to design the polysaccharide-based drugs of tomorrow. Traditional healers practice unconventional medicine based on approaches considered traditional in many communities, such as in Asia, India, Africa and South America. This medicinal practice is used to prevent or treat certain diseases or disorders but can also improves in some cases the quality of life, using the biodiversity of medicinal plants. It is therefore through an ethnobotanist approach that biomolecules (e.g.polysaccharides) of pharmaceutical interest can be discovered [1]. This approach involves the screening of medicinal plants that are known and recognized for their therapeutic effects (Figure 1). The second step is to identify the biological effects by performing tests on decoctions prepared from these plants. Once the identification is validated, specific extractions of active biomolecules are carried out in order to characterize and optimize their biological effectiveness. In the longer term, if the development of a new drug is considered, cytotoxicity and biocompatibility tests must be validated at the human cell level before clinical studies can be performed [2]. Consequently, the delay between the traditional practitioner and the placing on the market of a new active biomolecule is particularly long.

Figure 1: Strategy for finding and developing new active polysaccharides from medicinal plants, adapted from Qazi Majak and Molvi Khurshid [2].

Dry lands, i.e., arid and semi-arid zones, possess specific climates, characterized by very low rainfall and extreme temperatures, which are at the origin of the emergence of a specific flora and fauna, sometimes endemic to this environment. As is often the case, this adaptation of organisms to a singular environment has been followed by the appearance of new biological functions and specific metabolites. Far from being devoid of plant life and despite its very mineral appearance, desert areas, such as Sahara, do not avoid this rule and the characterization of its flora has already allowed to identify many species described anywhere else. The inventory of this fragile biodiversity is partly motivated by the search for new active ingredients that can eventually become one way for the preservation of species in this environment. Indeed, many plants from arid and semi-arid environments are used by local populations in traditional medicine for their therapeutic properties.The change in lifestyle of these populations and the use of modern therapeutic practices are at the origin of the gradual disappearance of these uses and part of the ethnobotanical knowledge accumulated over the centuries. The identification of plant compounds at the origin of these practices is therefore of prime interest for the preservation of this flora and its possible exploitation. Applied to polysaccharides, this observation is particularly true in the context of plants from desert environments. Indeed, plants growing in hot and arid climates must cope with sometimes very long periods of dormancy and fight against lack of water. This adaptation endowed these plants with a certain number of physiological particularities allowing them to limit the loss of water and to accumulate storage substances. Polysaccharides play a leading role in this adaptation. These polymers are for the most part hydrophilic because of their numerous hydroxyl functions. This strong affinity for water gives them the status of hydrocolloids with thickening, gelling or stabilizing properties. The physiological roles of these polysaccharides are to maintain the structure of plant tissues or store carbon substrates.These two biological functions have long been the only ones attributed to polysaccharides. However, it is now accepted that these biopolymers can also carry biological activities and be strongly involved in certain cell signaling pathways.The inventory of existing structures is still very incomplete, and its exploration is often associated with the identification of novel polysaccharides carriers of biological activities and therefore to understanding structure-function relationships, in particular to explain the uses of certain plants traditional medicine. Overall, this scientific philosophy aims to explore the potential of arid and semi-arid plants as a source of polysaccharides with original structures and, secondly, to correlate these structures with biological activities and technofunctional properties potentially recoverable. It is important to remember that the study of plant polysaccharides goes first and foremost by the awareness of the great structural variability partly related to their numerous biological functions. Most often separated into three categories, there are (i) storage polysaccharides (starch, galactomannan) (ii) structural polysaccharides (celluloses, hemicelluloses, pectins) and (iii) exudates, gums or mucilages (gum arabic). Note that the difference between gums and mucilage still remains ambiguous since the former are rather sticky and come from the area of trees, while the latter are viscous hydrocolloids from seeds or soft tissues [3]. Polysaccharides constituting the mucilage are often polar and hydrophilic with very high molecular weight and are also highly branched and composed of different monosaccharides [4]. The physiological role of mucilage is not negligible since it allows the plant to absorb and store significant amounts of water. If necessary, the gradual release of water to other tissues is possible in times of drought. Conversely, in the presence of excessive amounts of water, swelling of the mucilage can lead to tissue breakdown. Finally, polysaccharides from higher plants have structural variability and a wealth of unique physicochemical properties. Herbs and officinal plants, often containing polysaccharides, are widely used for the treatment of diseases in traditional and modern medicine (ethnobotany and ethnic medicine). The originality of studying their polysaccharides often goes through their endemism and ability to secrete mucilage through specialized cells [5]. For several years, looking for new sources of plant polysaccharides, if possible with analog structures to glycosaminoglycans, has attracted much attention. In all cases, the work involves (i) identifying and/or collecting and/or cultivating original sources (ii) developing the conditions for extraction and purification of the polysaccharides produced, (iii) characterizing the polysaccharide structure(s) (i.e., composition in monosaccharides, glycosidic bonds, analysis of the substituents, ...), and finally (iv) identifying their physicochemical properties in solution (rheological studies) as well as some of their biological properties (anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-microbial, anti-coagulant, anti-parasitic, prebiotic, ...). Today, paying more attention for better understanding the so-called structure/function relationships by exploiting the data already available for existing molecules seems to be essential. The resolution of complex structures of polysaccharides is one of the current locks concerning their uses and valuations. Apprehending the roles of these polymers is probably one of the challenges of the coming decades. A better structural overview would make it possible to highlight new possibilities of applications but also to address more fundamental problems such as the role of certain glycoside units, constituents or specific sequences on very varied functional activities (mechanistic approach). Taking inspiration from Nature and making your own polymers (glycosaminoglycan mimetics) by enzymatic and/or chemical modifications seems to be a “first class” front of sciences. This global strategy is applied in our laboratory (Institut Pascal, Université Clermont-Auvergne) in the PHC TASSILI program of EGIDE (15MDU933) and Campus France (33195UK).

Conflicts of Interest

All authors declare no conflicts of interest in this article.

  1. Cox P, Balick M (1994) The ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery. Sci Am 270: 82-87.
  2. Qazi Majaz A, Molvi Khurshid I (2016) Herbal Medicine: A Comprehensive Review. Int J Pharm Res 8: 1-5.
  3. Voragen AGJ, Pilnik W, Thibault JF, Axelos MAV, Renard CMGC (1995) Pectins. In: Stephen AM (ed.). Food polysaccharides and their applications. Marcel Dekker, New York, USA. Pg no: 287-339.
  4. Petera B, Delattre C, Pierre G, Wadouachi A, Elboutachfaiti R, et al. (2015) Characterization of arabinogalactan-rich mucilage from Cereus triangularis cladodes. Carbohydr Polym 127: 372-380.
  5. Benaoun F, Delattre C, Boual Z, Ursu AV, Vial C, et al. (2017) Structural characterization and rheological behavior of a heteroxylan extracted from Plantago notata Lagasca (Plantaginaceae) seeds. Carbohydr Polym 175: 96-104.
Ocimum Scientific Publishers

Copyright © 2019 - All Rights Reserved -


Top 7 Prophets in the World And most Worshiped Religion

religions in the world

List of 7 Prophets in the World And most Worshiped Religion, this listing is not a comprehensive list of all religions, only the “major” ones.  There are distinct religions other than the ones listed above. But this list accounts for the religions of over 98% of the world’s population.

Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ

Jesus, also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, was a Jewish preacher and religious leader who became the central figure of Christianity. Christians believe him to be the Son of God and the awaited Messiah (Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.
Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was baptized by John the Baptist and subsequently began his own ministry, preaching his message orally and often being referred to as “rabbi”. He was arrested and tried by the Jewish religious authorities, and turned over to the Roman government, and was subsequently crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect.

Jesus debated fellow Jews on how to best follow God, performed healings, taught in parables and gathered followers. After his death, his followers believed he rose from the dead, and the community they formed eventually became the Christian Church.
His birth is celebrated annually on December 25 as a holiday known as Christmas, his crucifixion is honored on Good Friday, and his resurrection is celebrated on Easter.
Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice to achieve atonement, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, whence he will return. Most Christians believe Jesus enables humans to be reconciled to God.

Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point of the Christian faith. It is the world’s largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, known as Christians. Christians make up a majority of the population in 158 countries and territories. They believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah (the Christ) was prophesied in the Old Testament.

Muhammad is the prophet and founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was God’s Messenger, sent to confirm the essential teachings of monotheism preached previously by Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is viewed as the final prophet of God in all the main branches of Islam, though some modern denominations diverge from this belief. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity and ensured that his teachings, practices, and the Quran formed the basis of Islamic religious belief.

Born approximately 570 CE (Year of the Elephant) in the Arabian city of Mecca, Muhammad was orphaned at an early age; he was raised under the care of his paternal uncle Abu Talib. Periodically, he would seclude himself in a mountain cave named Hira for several nights of prayer; later, at age 40, he reported being visited by Gabriel in the cave, where he stated he received his first revelation from God. Three years later, in 610, Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that “God is One”, that complete “surrender” to him is the right course of action, and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, similar to the other prophets in Islam.

Muhammad gained few early followers, and met hostility from some Meccans. To escape persecution, Muhammad sent some followers to Abyssinia before he and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in the year 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, also known as the Hijri Calendar. In Medina, Muhammad united the tribes under the Constitution of Medina. In December 629, after eight years of intermittent conflict with Meccan tribes, Muhammad gathered an army of 10,000 Muslim converts and marched on the city of Mecca. The attack went largely uncontested and Muhammad seized the city with little bloodshed. In 632, a few months after returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage, he fell ill and died. Before his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam.

The revelations (each known as Ayah, lit. “Sign [of God]”), which Muhammad reported receiving until his death, form the verses of the Quran, regarded by Muslims as the “Word of God” and around which the religion is based. Besides the Quran, Muhammad’s teachings and practices (sunnah), found in the Hadith and sira literature, are also upheld by Muslims and used as sources of Islamic law. The name Muhammad means “praiseworthy” and appears four times in the Quran.

Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion which professes that there is only one and incomparable God (Allah) and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. It is the world’s second-largest religion and the fastest-growing major religion in the world, with over 1.8 billion followers or 24.1% of the global population, known as Muslims. Muslims make up a majority of the population in 49 countries. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, unique, and has guided mankind through prophets, revealed scriptures and natural signs. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the verbatim word of God, and the teachings and normative example of Muhammad.

Krishna is the god of compassion, tenderness, and love in Hinduism. He is one of the most widely revered and popular Indian divinities worshipped as the eighth incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu and also as the supreme God in his own right. Krishna’s birthday is celebrated every year by Hindus on Janmashtami according to the lunisolar Hindu calendar, which falls in late August or early September of the Gregorian calendar.
Krishna is also known by numerous names, such as Govinda, Mukunda, Madhusudhana, Vasudeva, and Makhan chor in affection. The anecdotes and narratives of Krishna’s life are generally titled as Krishna Leela.

He is a central character in the Mahabharata, Bhagavata Purana and the Bhagavad Gita, and is mentioned in many Hindu philosophical, theological, and mythological texts. They portray him in various perspectives: a god-child, a prankster, a model lover, a divine hero, and as the supreme power. His iconography reflects these legends, and show him in different stages of his life, such as an infant eating butter, a young boy playing a flute, a young man with Radha or surrounded by women devotees, or a friendly charioteer giving counsel to Arjuna.
Since the 1960s the worship of Krishna has also spread to the Western world and to Africa, largely due to the work of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).
he name “Krishna” originates from the Sanskrit word Kṛṣṇa, which is primarily an adjective meaning “black”, “dark”, or “dark blue”.

Hinduism is a religion, or a way of life, widely practiced in the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some practitioners and scholars refer to it as Sanātana Dharma, “the eternal tradition,” or the “eternal way,” beyond human history. Scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no founder. This “Hindu synthesis” started to develop between 500 BCE and 300 CE following the Vedic period (1500 BCE to 500 BCE).

Hinduism is the world’s third largest religion, with over one billion followers or 15% of the global population, known as Hindus. Hindus form the majority of the population in India, Nepal, Mauritius and the island of Bali in Indonesia. Significant Hindu communities are also found in many other countries.

Scholars are hesitant to make unqualified claims about the historical facts of the Buddha’s life. Most accept that he lived, taught and founded a monastic order during the Mahajanapada era during the reign of Bimbisara (c. 558 – c. 491 BCE, or c. 400 BCE), the ruler of the Magadha empire, and died during the early years of the reign of Ajatasatru, who was the successor of Bimbisara, thus making him a younger contemporary of Mahavira, the Jain tirthankara.

Buddhism and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. Buddhism originated in Ancient India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, from where it spread through much of Asia, whereafter it declined in India during the middle Ages. Two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognized by scholars: Theravada (Pali: “The School of the Elders”) and Mahayana (Sanskrit: “The Great Vehicle”). Buddhism is the world’s fourth-largest religion, with over 500 million followers or 7% of the global population, known as Buddhists.

Buddhist schools vary on the exact nature of the path to liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices. Practices of Buddhism include taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, study of scriptures, observance of moral precepts, renunciation of craving and attachment, the practice of meditation (including calm and insight), the cultivation of wisdom, loving-kindness and compassion, the Mahayana practice of bodhicitta and the Vajrayana practices of generation stage and completion stage.

Guru Nanak ((1469 – 1539) was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. His birth is celebrated world-wide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on Kartik Pooranmashi, the full-moon day in the month of Katak, October–November.

Guru Nanak has been called “one of the greatest religious innovators of all time”. He travelled far and wide teaching people the message of one God who dwells in every one of His creations and constitutes the eternal Truth. He set up a unique spiritual, social, and political platform based on equality, fraternal love, goodness, and virtue.

Guru Nanak’s words are registered in the form of 974 poetic hymns in the holy text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, with some of the major prayers being the Japji Sahib, the Asa di Var and the Sidh-Ghost. It is part of Sikh religious belief that the spirit of Guru Nanak’s sanctity, divinity and religious authority descended upon each of the nine subsequent Gurus when the Guruship was devolved on to them.

According to Sikh traditions, the birth and early years of Guru Nanak’s life were marked with many events that demonstrated that Nanak had been marked by divine grace. Commentaries on his life give details of his blossoming awareness from a young age. At the age of five, Nanak is said to have voiced interest in divine subjects.
Nanak was a Guru (teacher), and founded Sikhism during the 15th century. The fundamental beliefs of Sikhism, articulated in the sacred scripture Guru Granth Sahib, include faith and meditation on the name of the one creator, unity of all humankind, engaging in selfless service, striving for social justice for the benefit and prosperity of all, and honest conduct and livelihood while living a householder’s life.

The Guru Granth Sahib is worshipped as the Supreme Authority of Sikhism and is considered the eleventh and final guru of Sikhism. As the first guru of Sikhism, Guru Nanak contributed a total of 974 hymns to the book.

Sikhism from Sikh, meaning a “disciple”, or a “learner”), is a monotheistic/panentheistic religion that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent about the end of the 15th century. It is one of the youngest of the major world religions. The fundamental beliefs of Sikhism, articulated in the sacred scripture Guru Granth Sahib, include faith and meditation on the name of the one creator, unity of all humankind, engaging in selfless service, striving for social justice for the benefit and prosperity of all, and honest conduct and livelihood while living a householder’s life.

Sikhism is based on the spiritual teachings of Guru Nanak, the first Guru, and the ten successive Sikh gurus. Sikhism is a relatively recent religion that evolved in times of religious persecution. Two of the Sikh gurus – Guru Arjan and Guru Tegh Bahadur, after they refused to convert to Islam, were tortured and executed by the Mughal rulers. The persecution of Sikhs triggered the founding of the Khalsa, as an order to protect the freedom of conscience and religion, with qualities of a “Sant-Sipāhī” – a saint-soldier. Sikhism has 25-28 million adherents worldwide and is the ninth-largest religion in the world.

Moses in both the Septuagint and the New Testament) is a prophet in the Abrahamic religions. According to the Hebrew Bible, he was a former Egyptian prince who later in life became religious leader of Israelites and lawgiver, to whom the authorship of the Torah or acquisition of the Torah from Heaven is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew, lit. “Moses our Teacher”), he is the most important prophet in Judaism. He is also an important prophet in Christianity, Islam, the Bahá’í Faith, and a number of other Abrahamic religions.

According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in numbers and the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might ally themselves with Egypt’s enemies. Moses’ Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites.

Through the Pharaoh’s daughter (identified as Queen Bithia in the Midrash), the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile river and grew up with the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slavemaster (because the slavemaster was smiting a Hebrew to death), Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, where he encountered The Angel of the Lord, speaking to him from within a burning bush on Mount Horeb (which he regarded as the Mountain of God).

God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses said that he could not speak with assurance or eloquence, so God allowed Aaron, his brother, to become his spokesperson. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died within sight of the Promised Land on Mount Nebo.

Scholarly consensus sees Moses as a legendary figure and not a historical person. Rabbinical Judaism calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391–1271 BCE; Jerome gives 1592 BCE, and James Ussher 1571 BCE as his birth year.

Judaism (from Latin: Iudaismus, derived from Greek Ἰουδαϊσμός, originally from Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, “Judah”; in Hebrew: יהדות, Yahadut, the distinctive characteristics of the Judean ethnos) is an ancient monotheistic Abrahamic religion, with the Torah as its foundational text (part of the larger text known as the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible), and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. It encompasses the religion, philosophy, culture and way of life of the Jewish people.

Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship that God established with the Children of Israel. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth-largest religion in the world.
The history of Judaism spans more than 3,000 years. Judaism has its roots as a structured religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age.

Judaism is considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions. The Hebrews and Israelites were already referred to as “Jews” in later books of the Tanakh such as the Book of Esther, with the term Jews replacing the title “Children of Israel”. Judaism’s texts, traditions and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam and the Baha’i Faith.

Bahá’u’lláh ( “Glory of God”;born 12 November 1817 – 29 May 1892) was the founder of the Bahá’í Faith. He claimed to be the prophetic fulfilment of Bábism, a 19th-century outgrowth of Shaykhism, and, in a broader sense to be a Manifestation of God. He also claimed he was the fulfillment of the eschatological expectations of Islam, Christianity, and other major religions.

Bahá’u’lláh became a follower of the Báb in Persia in 1845. Three years after the Báb was executed, he was exiled to Baghdad (then a part of the Ottoman Empire), where in 1863 he proclaimed the Bahá’í Faith when he declared himself He whom God shall make manifest, a messianic figure in the religion of Bábism. Bahá’u’lláh based this announcement on an experience he had where he is said to have had a vision of the Maid of Heaven while imprisoned in the Síyáh-Chál in Tehran, Persia. He would be further exiled to Edirne and ultimately to the prison city of Acre, Palestine (present-day Israel), where he died. He wrote many religious works, most notably the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Kitáb-i-Íqán and Hidden Words.
Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings focus on the unity of God, religion, and mankind. Similar to other monotheistic religions, God is considered the source of all created things. Religion, according to Bahá’u’lláh, is renewed periodically by Manifestations of God, people who are made perfect through divine intervention and whose teachings are the sources of the major world religions throughout history. Unlike other divine messengers, Bahá’ís view Bahá’u’lláh as the first whose mission includes the spiritual unification of the entire planet through the eventual eradication of racism and nationalism. Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings include the need for a world tribunal to adjudicate disputes between nations, a uniform system of weights and measures, and an auxiliary language that could be spoken by all the people on earth. Bahá’u’lláh also taught that the cycles of revelatory renewal will continue in the future, with Manifestations of God appearing about every thousand years.

The Bahá’í Faith is a religion teaching the essential worth of all religions, and the unity and equality of all people. Established by Bahá’u’lláh in 1863, it initially grew in the Middle East and now has between 5-7 million adherents, known as Bahá’ís, spread out into most of the world’s countries and territories, with the highest concentrations in India and Iran.
The religion was born in Iran, where it has faced ongoing persecutions since its inception. It grew from the mid-19th century Bábí religion, whose founder reinterpreted Shia Islam and said that God would soon send a prophet in the manner of Jesus or Muhammad.

    I have joined your rss feed and look forward to seeking more

  • This is an amazing write up with an excellent topic. Youth of today has no deep information about their religion and the motivators behind. This kind of article is very much needed in such times.

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this:


Rebirth of Brand
Myth of Politics

The use of Cultural Archetypes and Symbols in Branding

Written by
Sandy Dunlop

The iconic American agency Leo Burnett built on and added to the paradigm of red rhetoric. They too shared Kenneth Burke’s belief that the way we understand social reality is through the meaning we all attach to our environment. We share a mutual understanding of the values and meaning of common myth and story systems.

These can be identified as the universally shared symbols and archetypes of the culture. Leo Burnett was the Agency renowned for successfully delivering this red rhetoric approach. His acknowledged mentor was Theodore MacManus, star copywriter for General Motors, who believed that advertising’s best aim is not to convince but rather to suggest.

MacManus believed in advertising by atmosphere and suggestion, and his aim was to build a durable image of reliable quality, based on his consistent messaging.

In the same ‘red rhetoric’ tradition, the Leo Burnett Agency, particularly their copywriter De Witt (Jack) O’Keeffe, used non-verbal archetypes and symbols, which were often taken from American folklore and history. They believed these were able to penetrate people’s minds by refreshing and building relevant associations with (cultural) meaning systems.

The result was a series of iconic campaigns. The Jolly Green Giant (Paul Bunyan) was used for the Minnesota Valley Canning Company. The Marlboro cigarette was built on cowboy mythology. The Pillsbury Doughboy was created for Pillsbury products, and Tony the Tiger for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.

Leo Burnett Iconic Brands

These are some of the more notable of the great iconic campaigns of this era. They have each taken their place in cultural folklore.

These commercials are about identity building. For the office worker in a vast bureaucracy, feeling emasculated by his boss and the system, Marlboro was far more than a good smoke. “This is not a cigarette, it gives me back my mojo”.

It drew on the cowboy genre, which was hugely popular in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. It was estimated that 16 hours per week of prime time in the ’60s was filled with cowboy films. Marlboro was appropriating the most familiar genre of popular culture to create the longing for the strongman and deliver on it.

What Leo Burnett clearly recognised is that it is not just the utility of the product that mattered but its symbolic meaning.

This lightning flash is to honour one of the ‘great red rhetoric’ agencies in advertising history, Leo Burnett. Their advertising created an atmosphere or a world by drawing on cultural archetypes.

In Thunder 4 we spell out the difference between the ‘blue’ and ‘red’ schools. Here are the big names of each. This battle has raged on for the 20th century. It hasn’t stopped yet.

Great Brand Thinkers

So knowing all this... Where is the advertising world in the 21st century? What is the effect of the digital phenomenon and the apparent domination of technology and big data? What is the effect of clients having to pay for ’creativity’ because agencies no longer have the 15%/17% commission on media buying to find great creatives? What is the effect of persuasion based ad testing being so ubiquitous?

What is the effect of big technology consulting companies buying up creative houses from around the world? How will the cultures merge?

To explain what has happened in the language of myth, a corporate culture that is more Apollo - ordered, rigid, structured, has taken over businesses that are more naturally Dionysian – free-flowing, spontaneous, joyful, bordering on (creative) madness.

Apollo and Dionysos and Brands

Mythologically speaking, they are both important gods, but each can only operate properly in the absence of the other.

Either way, this is still a call for a Rebirth of Brand – we still long for great work.

November 27, 2019
November 27, 2019

Similar Posts


Justice in the Twenty-First Century

Op-ed in Aspenia 66 "Falchi, colombe e gufi," Aspen Institute Italia, www.aspeninstitute.it.

October 1, 2014

The author gratefully acknowledges support for his inequality work from the ERANDA Foundation, but the views expressed here are solely his own.

The response to Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been truly phenomenal, both in popular discourse and in academic debate. It is perhaps unsurprising that provocative efforts to push the boundaries of economic knowledge forward are met with academic interest. Piketty's central thesis that capitalism has a natural tendency to generate massive inequalities in wealth ownership when economic growth falls significantly below the rate of return to capital challenges many widely held beliefs in the economics profession such as the reliance on representative agent models in macroeconomics, the stability of competitive market mechanisms, or the conventional wisdom about the degree of substitutability between capital and labor in aggregate production.

However, the huge popular interest in Piketty's book also reflects a growing sense of injustice in the face of contrasting fortunes of a small elite and the majority of citizens. This is particularly so in the United States, where, as Piketty shows, the gap between the top and the rest has grown larger than in any other developed economy.

Piketty's own work suggests that these concerns over fairness in the popular discourse are at least partly justified. He shows, for example, that the "supermanagers" at the apex of the income distribution in English-speaking countries are rapidly increasing their incomes relative to the rest of the population, including those with similar educational attainment, and relative to their counterparts in continental Europe and Japan. There is, however, no corresponding improvement in their performance observable in aggregate productivity data.

One may quibble with Piketty's preferred explanation, which blames the reduction in top income tax rates for increasing incentives to engage in rent-seeking activity on the part of senior managers of large firms. But the striking cross-country differences suggest that there is something distinctive and unsavory about the path Anglo-Saxon capitalism has taken over the past thirty years. We cannot discuss and assess the determinants of top incomes or wealth, their social value, nor the remedies of injustice with the summit of the distribution shrouded in mist. The data gathered by Piketty and his colleagues therefore represent an enormous contribution to social science and to democratic debate.

Piketty's data offer us a better view upwards in the distribution of resources, but in our anger at the sight of plutocrats continuing to increase their share of the economic pie, largely unscathed by the Great Recession, we should not forget that justice also demands attention to the other end. Indeed, the liberal egalitarian tradition, to which I think Piketty would subscribe, pays particular attention to the conditions of the least advantaged members of society. An important purpose of progressive taxation is to finance social programs aimed at improving the lot of those at the bottom not just to prevent the rich from getting too far ahead of the middle class.

Measuring a concept as morally charged as inequality is clearly a challenge and no statistical measure can fully capture society's normative attitude towards the distribution of resources. The top of the distribution is where much of the action has been over the past few decades but the share of income or wealth going to the top 1 or 10 percent obviously tells us little about the position of the least advantaged. For example, the relationship between top income shares and poverty rates across advanced countries is positive but very weak. Moreover, top income or wealth shares are unsuitable for analyzing some of the most important questions of justice such as material deprivation that is attributable to past and present discrimination.

To be fair to Piketty he is well aware of the pitfalls of trying to summarize inequality in a single measure. He notes that "social reality and economic and political significance of inequality are very different at different levels of the distribution, and it is important to analyze these separately" (page 266). My comment is meant only as a point of emphasis to those who expect to find in Piketty's book an exhaustive account of inequality. They will not.

For example, from a liberal egalitarian perspective, the improvement in the wealth distribution in the twentieth century that Piketty documents looks less impressive than suggested by the significant decline in top wealth shares because all of the redistribution occurred above the median. Wealth ownership of the bottom 50 percent is today as minuscule as it always has been. There is no denying that the rise of the patrimonial middle class had profound political and social implications for the developed economies, but it does not follow that it has made them significantly more just.

In the same vein, Piketty's proposed remedy to deal with rising top wealth shares, a global tax on capital or net assets, redistributes wealth primarily among existing wealth owners. It alleviates the tax burden of (mostly middle class) mortgagors, who currently pay property tax based on the gross value of the property rather than the value net of mortgage debt and increases the burden on the truly wealthy whose portfolios are composed primarily of financial and business assets that currently avoid tax. Unless the tax is designed to raise substantial revenue little benefit would extend to those in the bottom half of the distribution.

Another point of fairness worth emphasizing relates to the distinction between wealth that results from accumulation of lifetime savings and wealth that is inherited. A popular approach to the distribution of resources says that it should be sensitive to people's choices but insensitive to their circumstances or endowments that are a result of luck rather than choice. Inequality in wealth accumulated from savings and investments is partly influenced by the distribution of income from which people can save. But it also to a considerable degree reflects people's choices between saving and consumption, and between risky and safe investments. Provided such choices are well-informed it is fair that people should face the consequences. Inequality in wealth from savings is therefore much less morally problematic than inequality in inherited wealth, which is an example par excellence of differences in arbitrary circumstances and material endowments.

To my mind the most shocking analysis in Piketty's book concerns the growing importance of inherited wealth. He shows that among recently born cohorts in France around one in eight individuals can expect to receive in inheritance at least the equivalent of the lifetime labor income received by the bottom 50 percent of labor earners. This is higher than at any time in history and is a direct consequence of the redistribution of wealth above the median. More individuals are now in the position of heirs of sizable fortunes that add to their lifetime resources more than the average person in the bottom half can expect to earn in a lifetime. The wealth redistribution among the relatively well-to-do is making a remedy of this injustice more difficult because a growing share of the electorate stands to benefit from low inheritance taxes.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century breaks new ground in analyzing what is undoubtedly an important component of inequality and distributive justice, the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top. But building a more just society in the twenty-first century will also require increased attention to those at the bottom.

A key priority should be the reduction of inequality in human capital by supporting the educational attainment of children from poor households. Mounting evidence on the importance of early childhood development should refocus public investment towards preschool education, support and training for parents, and nutritional assistance. At the secondary level the challenge is to balance the benefits of vocational education and apprenticeship programs in providing effective transition to the labor market with the costs of early and rigid selection of students by ability into different tracks, which tends to reproduce education differentials by socioeconomic group. Most countries, but particularly those with university fees, can do more to encourage students from poorer households to pursue tertiary education through student grants.

More can also be done to help vulnerable adults. Income support for low-wage workers, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit in the United States, is an effective way of reducing working poverty. It is particularly effective when combined with a minimum wage, which prevents the subsidy on low wage labor from being captured by employers. Regional disparities in unemployment can be tackled with policies to aid geographic mobility such as grants, migration zones, and support for rented housing. Tax incentives and affirmative action policies can be deployed to encourage employment of disabled people and other disadvantaged minorities, such as the Romas in Europe.

Even if Piketty's tax utopia were to become reality there is no question that it is the middle class who will continue to constitute the bulk of the tax base called upon to finance such policies. Making sure that the rich contribute their fair share is important. But the real political challenge in the twenty-first century will be to maintain support for the idea that the burden of achieving justice has to be shouldered by all.